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Daily consumption of broccoli can go a long way in protecting people from the harmful effects of air pollution, a study from John Hopkins University has found.

A clinical trial, conducted in Jiangsu Province — one of China’s most polluted regions — found that those that consumed a beverage that included broccoli sprouts helped participants to excrete toxins associated with particle and ozone air pollution.

The study, which involved nearly 300 men and women, found that daily consumption of a 1/2 cup a beverage containing sterilized water, pineapple, lime juice and broccoli sprout powder, produced significantly higher levels of excretion of benzene, a carcinogen, and acrolein, a lung irritant. A control group drank the same beverage without the broccoli powder and. A compound in broccoli, sulforaphane, has previously been shown to have anti-carcinogenic properties in studies conducted on animals.

The study, published in the online edition of the journal Cancer Prevention Research, was conducted by the University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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What can we as global citizens do to stop Monsanto in its track. This company that’s killing small farmers and killing us with its genetically modified concoction call food is now trying to use its influence by doling out money to local leaders in Hawaii to gets it way into their agricultural business. Monsanto is bad for business, bad for us and bad for the world. They are surviving because of lack of labelling on their food products. Their foods are fed to poor children all over the world with its food programs including to schools in the US of A. This company is too brazen. Let’s put an end to this madness now.

June 12, 2014 | Hawai’i has become “ground zero” in the controversy over genetically modified (GMO) crops and pesticides. With the seed crop industry (including conventional as well as GMO crops) reaping $146.3 million a year in sales resulting from its activities in Hawai’i, the out-of-state pesticide and GMO firms Syngenta, Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow Chemical, BASF, and Bayer CropScience have brought substantial sums of corporate cash into the state’s relatively small political arena.

Chemical Conglomerates Retaliate Against Local Democratic Control

These “Big 6” pesticide and GMO firms are active on the islands in a big way, making use of the three to four annual growing seasons to develop new GMO seeds more quickly. The development of new GMOs by these pesticide and seed conglomerates goes hand-in-hand with heavy pesticide use in some of the islands’ experimental crop fields, new data show.

Kaua’i County — consisting primarily of the island of Kaua’i, known as Hawai’i’s “Garden Isle” and home to Waimea Canyon State Park — passed a law in November 2013 that requires disclosure of pesticide use and GMO crops sewn by growers and created buffer zones around schools, parks, medical facilities, and private residences. The law is set to go into effect in August 2014.

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Ikaria, an island of 99 square miles and home to almost 10,000 Greek nationals, lies about 30 miles off the western coast of Turkey. Its jagged ridge of scrub-covered mountains rises steeply out of the Aegean Sea. Before the Christian era, the island was home to thick oak forests and productive vineyards. Its reputation as a health destination dates back 25 centuries, when Greeks traveled to the island to soak in the hot springs near Therma. In the 17th century, Joseph Georgirenes, the bishop of Ikaria, described its residents as proud people who slept on the ground. “The most commendable thing on this island,” he wrote, “is their air and water, both so healthful that people are very long-lived, it being an ordinary thing to see persons in it of 100 years of age.”

Seeking to learn more about the island’s reputation for long-lived residents, I called on Dr. Ilias Leriadis, one of Ikaria’s few physicians, in 2009. On an outdoor patio at his weekend house, he set a table with Kalamata olives, hummus, heavy Ikarian bread and wine. “People stay up late here,” Leriadis said. “We wake up late and always take naps. I don’t even open my office until 11 a.m. because no one comes before then.” He took a sip of his wine. “Have you noticed that no one wears a watch here? No clock is working correctly. When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.”

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I watched an interesting, informative and well researched documentary on CBC on Friday evening. It was a window into the world of the organic industry from North America to China. It exposed some of the fakes and some who are really committed to providing us with the best foods they can. It is also become clear that going organic is not only good for people it is good for the soil. Conventional farmers would be wise to moe into the organic industry and rely less on dangerous, deadly chemicals with which they lace our food. I know which brands I would be looking for now – Edens and Nature’s Path to be sure. Please check this out, the more you know,the more we know and use our dollars wisely, the more we will force entrepreneurs to change. Collectively, we can win the battle of cutting out chemicals from our foods.

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Ancel Keys, 96 is credited to the popularity of the Mediterranean diet. As a young scientist 50 years ago, Keys made the connection between where people lived, food they ate, and their state of health.He found that people in Greece, Southern Italy, southern France and parts of North Africa and the Middle Eat ate a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, used olive oil and ate more fish. He compared this to the North American diet of foods high in saturated fat, beef and cheese. He found that heart disease, which was rare in countries with Mediterranean diet, was the leading cause of death in North America.However, while the old fashioned Mediterranean diet might have been better modern day diet with white bread, pasta and white rice have been linked to increased risk of certain cancers, particularly thyroid, colon and stomach cancers. Italian fettuccine alfredo is laden with saturated fats.A serving of fried calamari may have the cholesterol equivalent of a four-egg omelet.These are not the kinds of food that Keys was talking about.

“The Mediterranean diet was nearly vegetarian, with fish and very little meat, and was rich in green vegetables and fruits,” says Keys, who is now a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. People living on Crete got more than one-third of their calories from fat, most of it from olive oil, which is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. They also consumed wine every day. Recapturing the Mediterranean IdealHere are a few tips from Dr. Keys:1. Fill your plate with fresh fruits and vegetables. The people of Crete were called mangifolia, which means “leaf-eaters,” because they consumed so many leafy green vegetables, foraged from the steep hillsides of the island. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories and fat and very rich in nutrients, including cancer-fighting antioxidants. 2. If you’re dining out, look for entrees with plenty of vegetables and very little cream or cheese— a vegetarian pasta tossed in olive oil and a little parmesan cheese, for instance, or grilled fish served with steamed vegetables. 3. When buying bread, choose loaves made with whole grains and flours.Refined foods cause blood sugar levels to spike because they are so easily digested, says David Jacobs Jr, PhD, professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Less processed, whole grain ones provide a more sustained level of energy over a longer period, making them more healthful, says Keys. 4. For dessert, choose something that provides one serving of fruit.How about baked apple slices, sprinkled lightly with cinnamon and sugar.